Most of us have heard people, mainly our elders, say that video games are a waste of time, or that they "rot your brain." A lot of us have probably conceded that they are not the most worthwhile or healthy use of our time, and we think of them as a guilty pleasure. But evidence suggests that there is no need to feel guilty--a lot of video games are actually good for your brain, and, I think, can also be a very worthwhile form of art.
I'll start with the evidence first. Daphney Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester, performed a study which, according to ABC Science "found that gamers are faster and more effective at filtering out irrelevant information and spotting targets in a cluttered scene. The size of their field of vision and their ability to track different moving objects in it is greater....Bavelier's studies show that if you put non-gamers on a diet of regular video game playing (50 hours over nine weeks for the vision experiment, and 10 hours over 10 days for the visual attention experiment) their attention and visual skills will improve. What's more, she says, these skills seem to last months, if not years."
It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that something that is fun is also good for you--we enjoy doing things that are good for our brains; from an evolutionary standpoint, we probably enjoy them because they are good for our brains--our brains release feel-good chemicals like dopamine in order to reward us for behaviors which are in some way beneficial for our health or ultimate reproductive success, and to encourage us to perform those activities again. Most things that we enjoy--music, sports, sex, funny conversations--have also been proven to be healthy for your brain. In the book “Everything Bad is Good for You author Steven Johnson provides an explanation for why video games are particularly good at activating the brain's dopamine reward system. He says, "If you create a system where rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment, you'll find human brains drawn to those systems, even if they're made up of virtual characters and simulated sidewalks. It's not the subject matter of these games that attracts – if that were the case, you'd never see twenty-somethings following absurd rescue-the-princess storylines like the best selling Zelda series on the Nintendo platform. It's the reward system that draws those players in, and keeps their famously short attention spans locked on the screen. No other form of entertainment offers that cocktail of reward and exploration."
In order to prove my point about video games as a worthwhile art form, I'd like to delve a little further into Johnson's example of the Zelda series, and those types of games which revolve around more than just action packed thrills. I spent a year or two of my childhood obsessed with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of TIme for Nintendo 64. There are a number reasons why, retrospectively, I can see why this was. One of them is Johnson's reason: that game, and games like it, clearly defined its rewards, and demanded that you explored a huge environment in order to achieve them, thus activating my brain's reward system. Then there is one of the reasons behind the ABC Science link I posted: there were difficult puzzles to solve in the game which also activated my brain's reward system. But there was also my response to the music and the visuals and the rich story line, which, although of course mediated by our brains, falls more in line with what we commonly refer to as art. Gamespot.com listed the music as one of its ten best video game soundtracks ever, and the density and intricacy of the plot of the game were praised extensively, often cited as reason for the game's widely acknowledged spot at the top of the list for the best video games of all time. The game's storyline follows all the steps of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, or "Hero's Journey" structure which has been identified as the archetypal glue which holds so many of our myths and stories together and makes them appealing. To claim that it is inherently less valuable as a piece of art because it is a brain-rotting video game is ignorant. In fact, games like Ocarina of Time offer additional interactive benefits in addition to telling a story like a book or movie would. For all these reasons, I think it is clear that our culture's views on video games as being an unhealthy, unproductive passtime are incorrect, and are sure to change as people open their minds to the new possibilities of this digital art form.
Overview
Most of us have heard people, mainly our elders, say that video games are a waste of time, or that they "rot your brain." A lot of us have probably conceded that they are not the most worthwhile or healthy use of our time, and we think of them as a guilty pleasure. But evidence suggests that there is no need to feel guilty--a lot of video games are actually good for your brain, and, I think, can also be a very worthwhile form of art.I'll start with the evidence first. Daphney Bavelier, professor of brain and cognitive science at the University of Rochester, performed a study which, according to ABC Science "found that gamers are faster and more effective at filtering out irrelevant information and spotting targets in a cluttered scene. The size of their field of vision and their ability to track different moving objects in it is greater....Bavelier's studies show that if you put non-gamers on a diet of regular video game playing (50 hours over nine weeks for the vision experiment, and 10 hours over 10 days for the visual attention experiment) their attention and visual skills will improve. What's more, she says, these skills seem to last months, if not years."
It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that something that is fun is also good for you--we enjoy doing things that are good for our brains; from an evolutionary standpoint, we probably enjoy them because they are good for our brains--our brains release feel-good chemicals like dopamine in order to reward us for behaviors which are in some way beneficial for our health or ultimate reproductive success, and to encourage us to perform those activities again. Most things that we enjoy--music, sports, sex, funny conversations--have also been proven to be healthy for your brain. In the book “Everything Bad is Good for You author Steven Johnson provides an explanation for why video games are particularly good at activating the brain's dopamine reward system. He says, "If you create a system where rewards are both clearly defined and achieved by exploring an environment, you'll find human brains drawn to those systems, even if they're made up of virtual characters and simulated sidewalks. It's not the subject matter of these games that attracts – if that were the case, you'd never see twenty-somethings following absurd rescue-the-princess storylines like the best selling Zelda series on the Nintendo platform. It's the reward system that draws those players in, and keeps their famously short attention spans locked on the screen. No other form of entertainment offers that cocktail of reward and exploration."
In order to prove my point about video games as a worthwhile art form, I'd like to delve a little further into Johnson's example of the Zelda series, and those types of games which revolve around more than just action packed thrills. I spent a year or two of my childhood obsessed with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of TIme for Nintendo 64. There are a number reasons why, retrospectively, I can see why this was. One of them is Johnson's reason: that game, and games like it, clearly defined its rewards, and demanded that you explored a huge environment in order to achieve them, thus activating my brain's reward system. Then there is one of the reasons behind the ABC Science link I posted: there were difficult puzzles to solve in the game which also activated my brain's reward system. But there was also my response to the music and the visuals and the rich story line, which, although of course mediated by our brains, falls more in line with what we commonly refer to as art. Gamespot.com listed the music as one of its ten best video game soundtracks ever, and the density and intricacy of the plot of the game were praised extensively, often cited as reason for the game's widely acknowledged spot at the top of the list for the best video games of all time. The game's storyline follows all the steps of Joseph Campbell's monomyth, or "Hero's Journey" structure which has been identified as the archetypal glue which holds so many of our myths and stories together and makes them appealing. To claim that it is inherently less valuable as a piece of art because it is a brain-rotting video game is ignorant. In fact, games like Ocarina of Time offer additional interactive benefits in addition to telling a story like a book or movie would. For all these reasons, I think it is clear that our culture's views on video games as being an unhealthy, unproductive passtime are incorrect, and are sure to change as people open their minds to the new possibilities of this digital art form.
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